ATTITUDE FOR ALTITUDE: GUY LEITCH
Some aircraft just go on forever. The DC-3/C-47s in SAAF service are 80 years old and – as ‘Dakeltons’ – are still expected to meet South Africa’s huge maritime patrol requirement. This is especially because chronic underfunding has reduced South Africa’s ability to patrol from St Helena to the Antarctic to wishful thinking. IN THE USA THE equivalent of our ‘Dakelton’, despite the massive defence budget, is the B-52 which after 60 years, is finally getting new engines – to keep it current to 2050, by when it will be 100 years old.
Now, after starring roles in the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the Persian Gulf War and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, equipping the B-52 fleet with new engines is an idea whose time has finally come.
The big surprise, at least to me, is that they are keeping the eight small-engine configuration, rather than going for the presumably much cheaper four medium-sized engine option.
At least four formal proposals to re-engine the bomber and more than twice as many studies on the subject date back to the 1970s. Up to now the closest it came to happening was in 1996 when Rolls-Royce and Boeing jointly proposed fitting each B-52 with four leased Rolls-Royce RB211-535 engines. This would have involved replacing the eight Pratt TF33s with a total thrust 136,000 lb with four RB211 engines with a total thrust 148,000 lb. The extra thrust and reduction in fuel consumption would cost approximately US$2.56 billion for the whole fleet.
by 2030 the engines will be “unsustainable.”
Since the 1960s the U.S. Air Force and Boeing have been investigating ways to replace the engines. “The oldest suggestion of a potential re-engine for the B-52 that I’ve seen was from 1969,” says James Kroening, Boeing’s B-52 programme manager. That wasn’t long after U.S. Strategic Air Command began flying the B-52B in 1955, carrying nuclear bombs to deter the Soviet Union.
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October 2021
